


And let fire cleanse my soul

by Beleriandings



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, M/M, Suicide Attempts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23650414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: "There's an empty place beside me where my lover ought to stand,And there's a burning sun before me, and the throttle's in my hand."
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Comments: 28
Kudos: 39





	And let fire cleanse my soul

**Author's Note:**

> _Please_ heed the tags and warnings, friends <3

The ship was small, cramped and dusty, one of the antiquated asteroid clippers; understandable, Jack thought, given the junkyard he’d pulled it from. Buying one – or stealing one – had seemed like too much effort, back on the planet’s surface.

Everywhere he went, these days, it was like that. As soon as his feet touched the ground in one place, he always found himself wanting to leave, sometimes within the hour. It wasn’t just Earth that felt too small; everywhere did.

 _Would it be like that forever?_ Jack found himself thinking. Was that what his eternity would be, the universe growing both smaller and emptier around him with each person he lost, with each place he left behind?

Never had the prospect of forever felt quite so stifling as it did now.

He felt himself pushed back in his seat, as he headed out of the atmosphere of the little dustball where he’d got this wreck of a ship. Once, he would have stayed a little longer and repaired it himself, fixed up the console and trained it to talk back to him. AIs were good to talk to, in a pinch, when he found the world too empty and needed someone to tell about the day he’d had.

That had been before, though. Before the Doctor, before Torchwood, before everything.

Now, he hadn’t even thought of lovingly fixing the ship, and certainly not of making it a home; all he wanted was to get off this planet.

He had somewhere in mind that he wanted to go.

Things could have been different; Jack could have gone back to the old routine. He’d certainly been doing the drinking part of it enough recently, and the impersonal, half-hearted sex with strangers. Trying to feel something, other than the aching, tearing loneliness, carving a hole in his chest every moment of the day.

The truth was, every planet with sentient life reminded him too much of Earth, these days. Earth, where he’d got marooned and made a home. Earth where he’d loved, and lost. Over and over and over again. His fault.

But no, he couldn’t think about that. Not now, not when his hands were clenched on the ship’s controls, taking him up into the atmosphere. He’d let go then, let himself go back, or on to the next place; but he couldn’t, he knew. There was something he had to accomplish here.

Ianto wouldn’t approve of this, Jack found himself thinking.

 _Ianto_. Even the sound of the name in his mind set off the pain in his chest, constant and tearing, like his heart was being wrenched out by inches, long and slow. Jack knew pain, was the thing; he knew pain that was drawn out, he knew that you could cover it up, drown it out so an extent, with a shorter, greater pain. He’d had occasion to become very good at it.

But not good enough. Nothing had been enough for this, so far; not the times he’d shot himself in the head, so many he’d lost count, nor the time he drank himself – literally – to death, poisoning himself until his central nervous system couldn’t take it anymore and he’d collapsed in an alley in an anonymous spaceport town, where corpses were common enough that people left them to the sand-rats. Not the time he’d antagonised that smuggler into killing him, slashing his throat from ear to ear and leaving him in a puddle of his own blood. Not the time he’d let himself get sucked into the engine of an interstellar freighter, his body vapourised to plasma in milliseconds.

He’d taken a while to come back from that one.

It hadn’t been enough, though. Nothing was enough. Even this wouldn’t be enough, ultimately. But it was something to be going on with, Jack thought as he turned the rickety little ship away from a safe orbit, on a trajectory that spiralled directly into the heart of the star.

That had been about half an hour ago. Jack was starting to feel the g-force in earnest now, as he leaned on the throttle, ignoring the warning lights that had begun blinking insistently on the console. He could feel it pushing him back, the pressure on his body, making his head ache and spin.

The lights were flashing, and an alarm began to blare. His face twisted, as he remembered another warning siren, red lights flashing out a warning as the man he loved had collapsed in his arms, Jack’s world shattering around him.

Now, as the star before him grew closer, filling the viewing screen, he felt only gratitude as the forces began to feel like to crush him. He wondered when he’d lose consciousness, the ferocious force to his brain sweeping away the memory of that day, turning his awareness to silent black oblivion for a little while at least. He wondered if he’d die before the ship failed, or after. If the shields went, then maybe he would burn first.

It was crushing his chest, his lungs unable to expand properly as the ship’s nose tipped forward. That was familiar too; it had taken Jack a few minutes to die, back then, his lungs shutting down and the familiar spinning dizziness of oxygen starvation making him panic, sobbing and muttering Ianto’s name as his eyes closed for the last time.

There was red outside, the outer shielding of the ship beginning to glow with a dull crimson as Jack drove it down into the dive, already skirting the stellar corona. Red, lit by the occasional burst of plasma as an insulation tile spun off, burning, into the blackness of space.

 _Red flashing lights, a roaring in his head he’d held Ianto in his arms that last time, had felt Ianto’s_ _weak_ _breath ghosting against his lips_ _with that final kiss_.

In that moment, as in this one – as with every death between then and now – he only wished he’d never come back from it, could fall into that darkness and stay there with Ianto until the universe crumbled to dust and particles, time unravelling with it.

But he couldn’t. Before long he’d come back even from this, Jack knew as the star loomed large, its light making his eyes water and his face burn despite the shielding. Soon he’d come back, even if his body burned to nothing.

Alone. Always alone, in the end.

And that was when he heard the voice.

“ _Jack_.”

He let out a sound, a sharp, strained breath from his compressed lungs.

He’d recognise that voice anywhere; of course he would, he’d know it in a thousand years, a million, from the way his name sounded alone.

He looked up, eyes watering, his vision already beginning to tunnel at the edges.

And he saw Ianto, standing beside the console – leaning his hip against it, like he’d sometimes come and lean on Jack’s desk at the end of a long day - and staring down at him.

Jack’s mouth opened a little, lips parted in surprise as he met Ianto’s gaze. Ianto looked solid enough, not like a ghost. But somewhere in the depths of his oxygen-starved brain Jack knew that if he tried to touch him, his hand would pass straight through empty air.

Not that it mattered. Jack blinked away the tears welling in his eyes, impatient; he didn’t know how long he’d have Ianto for, and he wanted to spend that time doing nothing but look at him, burn his face into his mind and his heart forever.  
Jack was so desperately afraid of forgetting.

Ianto was still leaning against the console, holding on to one of the hand holds in the cramped cockpit. These ships weren’t built for more than one pilot, no room even for passengers. Jack noticed Ianto was wearing the same clothes he’d been in the day he died; waistcoat, striped tie, no jacket. He even had that shallow cut, high on his cheekbone.

He was very close to Jack, who had never wanted anything so much as he wanted to reach out and touch him now. He would have sold the whole world away, just for that.

“Jack” Ianto said again, breaking Jack out of his silent reverie. He looked around, taking in the ship, the star, all of it, his brow furrowing. “What are you doing?”

It wasn’t a real question, Jack knew. It was perfectly clear what he was doing. But Ianto looked upset, the glisten of unshed tears in his eyes catching the dull red glow from the ship’s hull outside.

“Ianto...” said Jack. It was all he could say. He let out a slightly hysterical laugh, that was more a sob. “I missed you.” It was as much an explanation as he could give right now.

“No! Stop it!” said Ianto. His face twisted as though in anguish. Jack had always hoped that Ianto hadn’t died in too much pain, but having died the same way himself, he didn’t hold out much hope. The tears began to run down his cheeks. “You shouldn’t do these things to yourself, Jack.”

He almost laughed; this was _his_ hallucination, born of oxygen starvation or the crushing forces to his brain, or _something_ , so why was he being told off? “Why?” the word cracked his throat as it came out, bitter and painful. “It’s not like I’ll die - ”

“ _Don’t_.” Ianto looked away from him, out towards the star; it filled almost all of the window now, too bright to look at even through the shielding. Jack looked anyway, his eyes smarting, tears flowing down his face. He was almost blind now, but somehow when he turned back, he could still see Ianto’s face, even though everything else was gone.

He felt a pang of guilt, at the thought that even this version of Ianto, conjured by his own mind, even him Jack had managed to hurt.

And he felt something; the touch of a hand on top of his, on the ship’s throttle. Or...no, not quite a touch. But not quite not a touch, either.

A gentle pressure, pulling back where he’d been pushing forwards.

“Jack. Don’t do this to yourself. Not because of me.”

“Ianto...” he swallowed, as best as he could with the force crushing him back against the seat. And all at once, he realised Ianto was right. He’d always, always been right, always able to see what Jack couldn’t. “I’m sorry, Ianto.”

He thought he saw Ianto smile, that very slight smile he had where just one side of his mouth lifted a little. He felt the pressure pulling his hands back increase, and stopped fighting against it.

He pulled back, firing the forward thrusters; he could still turn back, it wasn’t too late, Ianto didn’t want him to do this -

But it was too late, he realised. He’d come too close to turn, the ship was too far gone. The light had expanded to entirely fill the small space now, blazing bright, burning him. He bit his lip. “Stay with me, Ianto” he begged, just as he had back then. “Please, stay with me to the end? I’m sorry, so sorry...I couldn’t… I love you… I...” he tailed off, unable to speak words anymore as the last of the air left his lungs.

But even as it did, he felt arms go about him from behind, a face pressed against his shoulder. Holding on to him, until the very end.

Ianto always had been there for him, loving him even when Jack was wrong. When Jack made mistakes, Ianto told him so, and then forgave him. When he was in pain, suffering, Ianto had tried to make it stop. When he was hurting and dying, Ianto held on to him until he woke up again.

The very last thing Jack felt was a kiss pressed to his temple from behind, before all went white, a roll of blistering fire overwhelming him as he plunged into the stellar atmosphere, the ship breaking apart around him.

He still felt Ianto’s arms around him as his body was burned up, and all went black.

For a little while, at least.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a sad idea I couldn't get out of my head and I wanted to write out between chapters of my fix-it fic... the title and the summary quote are from the song [Darkness](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwnxqpWrX3w) by Julia Ecklar, which is one of my very favourites. Not only does it does make me an absolute emotional wreck in its own right, but it also heavily reminds me of post-CoE Jack. Please do listen to the lyrics; they are beautiful and a lot of the details in this story are very much based on them.


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